


We Once Dreamed in Red

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, F/F, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first uprising was brutal, and a new system had to be built out of the ashes of the destroyed districts. It was during the Dark Days that this revolution was put in motion, that the dreams of the new world were stitched and sewn by a group of friends dedicated to seeing the regime crumble- and sort of their never ending list of theatricals, relationships and dreams while they're at it. </p>
<p>Set during the Dark Days in Panem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Once Dreamed in Red

**Author's Note:**

> So this chapter is kind of the last one, and then the next chapters will start at the very beginning and work back to this one? If that makes any sense? I'm not sure, I hope you enjoy anyway. 
> 
> This first chapter is really quite graphic in its violence, but the chapters after this won't be really gory at all.

Something cold and heavy was resting on his cheek, frozen in place and gripping tightly. Darkness swarmed his vision, and as he tried to blink the light burnt and flared until he snapped them shut again. Light spots appeared in front of his eyes, but they blurred and twisted out of focus and he was unable to concentrate on any of them before they disappeared again. 

Flashes of what had happened passed by him, snippets of a blaze of fire and a sliding picture of bodies falling beside him were all swathed in red. Everything was red, from their waistcoats to the last look in their eyes, scarlet, crimson and blood. So much blood. He could still hear their shouts, screeches and moans in surround sound, but it was impossible to distinguish one from the other in the ghastly chorus. Each time his eyes opened and closed the light burned a little less, but as soon as he managed to open them properly he wished he never had. 

There was a body almost lying on top of him, and it took a few minutes of staring for him to realise the body was even human. After a few more seconds, the sight of the man became unbearable to look upon and for a moment he let his screams mingle with those around him, let the rage and pain swelling in his body breath in the blood and dust before it died on his lips. There were still tufts of black curls, scattered in patches across the scalp, though the matted blood made them darker, and he knew immediately who they had once belonged to. 

The sun was not burning into the ground any longer, for the rays had been blocked out by the countless hovercrafts filling the sky, roaring like oncoming storm clouds. And yet the heat was still unbearable. Each thrash his body made must have made him stand out, at least to the one which seemed trained upon him, but it never made any move to kill him and he cursed it with every breath left in his body. Half of his body or more must have been covered by the corpse on top of him, and it must have sheltered him from their view. People around him kept struggling to their feet and stumbled on the ashen ground, as if drunk, but soon fell as a nearby craft shot them down. If only he could be drunk, if only it could all be a nightmare concocted from too much liqueur which he could wake from with no more than a thin veil of sweat covering his body and his sheets tangled at his feet. 

He’d awaken in his arms, and their room would still be lost in the cover of darkness as he would hold him tight and kiss the nightmare away from his lips. His hand would rest lightly on his cheek as if to shut the world away, instead of clinging tightly as if to remind him the nightmare would never leave. Those blue eyes were meant to be filled with anger, indignation, love, humour or lost in some dream only he could interpret. His eyes had always been what had drawn the younger man to him in the first place, the way they danced in the shallow light and the way they’d scrunch up as he’d paint in the cool evenings. They weren't even there when he managed to gain the courage to look back at the crumbling corpse. Only ripped eye sockets stared back at him, chewed bite marks showing the carnage they had suffered. 

He wondered if Grantaire had been alive when they’d been removed and the thought made him retch and squirm, but the hand holding his face kept him firmly in place and refused to break and his body was far too heavy to shift. Grantaire had always struggled to let him go, and he had always counted his starts for it, though it seemed to count even in death, even when it would kill him. Everything was fuzzing, figures and feature blurring into each other and his mind wandered away without his permission. 

Memories of smoke filled nights in the crowded café, the taste of warm red wine hitting his lips in the early hours of the morning, the sight of dawn spread across the expanse of Grantaire’s back. The sound of friendly arguments about the latest president, about the purpose people were even given life for and what it all meant- if it meant anything at all and was not simply a way of wasting time with those closest- Grantaire’s favourite argument by far. He could remember discussing with Combeferre how best to tie a cravat, whilst simultaneously arguing with Courfeyrac that it really wasn’t possible to drink two liters of spirits through a straw in under five minutes and that no, he really should not test it out. He could remember Grantaire laughing himself off his chair at the prospect, and then immediately challenging Courfeyrac to exactly that. He could also remember dragging him home that night and Grantaire mistaking a lamppost as his lover and trying to seduce it with terrible puns and refusing to leave for at least half an hour before realising he was actually stood right next to him. 

The memories were warm and gave off their own light within his mind, and it was too soon that he realised he had lost himself within them, that he was not sitting by the Musain waiting for the next meeting to begin, plotting his dream but he was instead living the reality of it. 

Roaring with hunger, his stomach awoke him quickly from his visions, and his mouth burned for a drop of water. He didn’t know how longer he had been lying there, but the body pinning him down was becoming unbearable to be next to. Combeferre and Joly had once sat with them all in the Musain, training for their test the next day by quick firing facts to one another and taking a shot at each mistake. The night had passed in a haze of laughter, as their nights had want to do, but as he lay there dying with nothing better to do a random assortment of facts filtered through his mind. The horrendous stench, the foul coiling smell which was suffocating him far more than the dirt and dust surrounding him was most likely due to the putrid mix of blood and fecal matter the body releases at death. 

It was only a matter of time until a hover craft spotted his struggling and shot him dead, or the lack of sustenance in his body and the growling hunger devoured him. If only one would come shortly, for every second he had to lie beneath his lover was another second of torture like he had never known before. His dead body was terrible enough, the fact his breath would never again tickle his neck in the early morning, that he would never smile sleepily and scrunch his nose in confusion, those beautiful eyes he had adored so much would never open again. But to lie beside it? To be crushed under it, knowing it would be what killed him? The king of hell himself would have struggled to conjure such a torture surely. 

His body was beginning to fail him; he could feel it like it was a disconnected dream as each part of his mind grew cloudier. It struck him then how fragile human life was, how breakable. The body beside him had been ripped to ribbons by the teeth of the mutts, seeped in blood like a dirty rag cloth. Why hadn’t it been his body shredded, why had he been the one to survive left alive so close to his corpse? Why had the mutts not finished their damn job and torn away his life also? Why was he not missing his leg, ravaged and torn off leaving him like a grotesque puppet sagged on the street with his strings cut? 

If he could only escape some how, if he could only drag himself away from the corpse surely he could find the others? If he was alive than surely the others must be too, he could find Grantaire- for surely the corpse beside him could not be his. It was just a mistake, a coincidence, just another’s who looked remarkably similar. And what of Bahorel? With the strength of ten men surely he too could not cease to be from the world, or Jehan for who could bear to tear such a soul from the earth as Jean Prouvaire’s? 

Each second he lay, another scream pierced the air from the city in which they once thrived. The ash of those who had fought littered the street and the blood of the mangled and mauled collected in gutters. A hover craft had been circling near his body; he’d only been able to see it through the tufts of dark curls obscuring his vision and it weaved in and out of sight but it had definitely caught on to him. He wished he could fear it, could fear death as he once had. There was no longer any use for fear, not when his dream was laying in ash and rubble, not when the dead of those who had rose with him surrounded him and encompassed him. 

Eventually, the shot came. The hover craft still continued it’s circuit around him, as if waiting to see the job finished. They could have killed him instantly, at least half of his head was still visible, but that would be too merciful he knew. Instead they let him think on what his dream had cost, let him see all that he had achieved. Once more the Capitol had done exactly what it promised, and splattered and squashed the revolution as if it were no more than an irritating insect. Death didn’t hurt like he thought it was supposed to. Even the screaming pain of his thirst and hunger had died away, as if to give him a few moments of peace before the world turned off. He knew he hadn’t deserved the simplicity and efficiency of a bullet, not when it was his fault. He had led the people, and to what? Their murder, their annihilation. Why was he given a bullet when the man beside him had been ripped apart like an animal, a man who had only died for him. Not the revolution, not for a better future - for him. How could that be fairness? 

But in the end, the world isn’t fair. Which was why the bullet was the end of the blonde revolutionist. The lover. The solider of Democracy, the leader of L’ABC. The death of Enjolras.   
\----  
The air was sweet, like fresh spring, and the lights were tinted blue as if to give the room an ethereal glow. It was too sweet, a manufactured sugary scent which made bile rise in his throat as he sat shaking on the edge of the seat, watching the screen intently.

Marius struggled not to look, not to see the smug smirk spreading across the president’s face as if he had known from the very beginning. As if he had marked all of their cards in advance, picking out each of their flaws one by one as a spider weaves their fatal web. Marius could almost feel the thick smoke burning at his lungs as if he were stood beside them, where he should have been. 

The screen, the size of the entire far wall, left nothing to the imagination. Their screams tortured his ears and their cries gripped at his heart, but there was nothing he could do. The guilt throbbed each time the camera did another circle of the ground and another innocent was mowed down as if they were nothing more than dust being flicked off a collar.  
Each time the camera circled it would zoom in on the ground, over the bodies of the children whose bodies leaked with tracker jacker puss, over the wounded and dying still struggling to remain on their feet despite the slaughter. They were no match to the Capitol forces. This round was worse, and Marius could barely stop himself from retching. 

He could have been mistaken, but Marius could have picked those long auburn curls out a mile away, the once white ribbon holding them in place soaked red. He could remember the way the light would hit those curls in the dimming evening light, could remember hands carting through those curls softly before a kiss was placed upon the guide’s cheek before they left to die. Courfeyrac’s hand, the hand which had held the poet close so shortly before, could also be seen though his dark curls glistened with red. The curls of the man who had helped him when he’d needed him most, who he had trusted above all. Finally the guide and the centre were in a world they deserved- but it wasn’t Panem.

“Please. I can’t take this anymore, please stop this. I can’t- not them- I can’t-” Eyes stinging he wiped furiously to cover them, hoping for a second of mercy that the president would not see them, he was in no such luck. Once more the camera panned out and the bodies were in the hundreds. Some were burnt and crumbling, others crawling and sprawling like overturned beetles unable to right themselves. Some of the bodies he could vaguely recognise, a greengrocer who had been a good friend or a young lady from down the street, but some he could not even recognise as human. 

A sickly grin covered the president’s face as he took in Marius’s reaction, cataloging each wince and cry as if he wished to play them back later. “Take another look,” he urged, and the screen changed to show the bodies of two women lying side by side. Around them the street was stained with blood and debris, but it did nothing to dim the beauty of the blonde angel, her skin tinged green with the poison which had flooded her veins and stopped her heart. It was another of the Capitol’s success stories, a poison which could keep the victim alive for hours without any hope of release, left in the throws of agony without any antidote. Beside her, Eponine was too looked as if she was sleeping though the gaping hole where her heart should have been left Marius puking. In life they had burned so bright together, in death Cosette’s hand clutched Eponine’s desperately as if it were the only thing holding her to the earth. Perhaps in her last moments, it had been. 

“I still have a surprise for you, Mister Pontmercy, do not turn away on me now,” Marius was cowering from the screen, doubting there could possibly be anything worse then he had seen. His friends lying dead on the streets like vermin whilst his soul remained between his ribs, it was sickening. It was clear he had been saving the worst until last, and when the image appeared on the wall it took all the strength in Marius’s bones to keep watching. 

It was the first body he had been shown in detail which was clearly still alive and the vermillion jacket left no guesses as to who it belonged to. 

“It was a shame. Showed such promise, if only he had guided it to more useful purposes. Watch as he struggles, so sad to see such a powerful figure reduced to a squirming mess is it not? See, this is the man you were willing to follow into battle, to give your life for,” there was a pause as Enjolras made another attempt to shift away from the body pinning him in place, but to no avail. It took a few moments for Marius to even recognise the corpse atop of him as Grantaire’s and the revelation made him sob.

“It is a terrible shame that with skill like his, he could have one day been a great man. Mayhaps in a different life he could have ruled the world with his dreams, but you see this is the consequences of dreams. This is the reality we warned you of. No revolution, no hope and no power to the districts and the people. Just blood. I kept you alive for a reason Mr Pontmercy, to serve as a warning. To keep living, as a reminder to everyone around you what truly happens when the Capitol are crossed. I have a job for you Mr Pontmercy, a special place for you in a new game of my devising. You shall be the first tribute in my new games; I look forward to seeing you then.”


End file.
